April Fool’s – Navigating the Sovereign Debt Storm

Last month (April) was one of the most challenging months of trading for me in a while. Unfortunately, it took me most of last month and part of this month to figure out that I had to re-tool my approach in order for it to start working again. The grueling experienced last month was due to the bad timing – my decision to get aggressive with trading in April and the unfortunate change of market behavior getting weird…

Overbought / Oversold Mindset Is Useless With FX

I’m used to hearing the words “Overbought” and “Oversold” thrown around in equity trading rooms and within casual conversations among traders at the local bars/lounges. The terms are also used quite a bit by various television personalities when sharing their opinions about certain stocks. And though it might be possible to roughly determine when an issue is momentarily “overbought” or “oversold” with equities, using the Level II screen as a tool to better gauge buying and selling pressure, it is basically a guess when trading the FX market.

This is because there is no one order book in the FX market (there is no central exchange for FX trades) as there is with equities, futures, etc., – that means there is no one official source of all global trading volume or trades done like there is with other markets. Every market maker has their own volume numbers based on the deals they’re doing directly with other market makers or on behalf of their retail clients (see post, “Behind the Closed Doors of FX Market Makers”). Because this information is fragmented, you have no way of really knowing if the FX pair you’re trading is starting to be overbought/oversold as you might with traditional equity trading.

Retail FX market makers offering platforms that show multiple price levels (appearing like Level II screens in equities) are not true Level II…

Behind the Closed Doors of FX Market Makers

Probably one of the best write-ups I’ve seen in a long time describing how retail FX market making works can be accessed here. The article was written by Javier Paz, President of Forex Datasource.

If you ever wondered how how retail FX market makers (like FXCM, GFT, Gain/Forex.com, etc.) make prices and fill trades, this article says it all. I’ve heard a lot of crap over the years from amateurs or those new to trading the FX market who have interesting stories about how market makers screwed their trades. Though it’s possible for a market maker (particularly of a Dealing Desk model – see article for explanation) to routinely “screw” their clients, it’s very unlikely to not possible with external execution (No-Dealing-Desk) models.

The sad truth behind who’s to blame behind so many, “I got screwed by XYZ market maker…

Trading News Events Without Losing Your Shirt

So how do veteran traders consistently make money when trading news events? They don’t.

A study was done by a good acquaintance of mine (a well-known FX market analyst who appears regularly on CNBC) to determine how often the market actually moves in the direction expected based on whether or not the news (financial data) turned out to be good or bad for the market. Interestingly, but not surprising, the market only moves as expected 50% of the time relative to the actual resulting news release. That means, that no matter how hard you try to analyze which way financial data releases (like the big NFP – Non-farm Payrolls) will push the market you will only have a coin-flip chance of being right. Are you willing to bet your hard-earned money on a coin-flip during some of the most dangerous moments in the market? I’d hope not.

Even though traders like myself don’t necessarily trade the news event, we will trade before a news event and hold positions through the event or be flat and not trade until several minutes after the event. So our job is not to…

Warning: These Are Not Trading Strategies

This is some of the most inaccurate novice stuff I’ve ever seen in my trading life. It’s just plain wrong.

A trading strategy is a plan that dictates when and why you’d be getting into and out of a trade. A real strategy includes money management rules and based on the strategy you’ll be able to tell when it’s working and when it starts to break down.

The items noted in the outlandish post above are…

Trading – The Best Technical Indicator

wasn’t entirely sure that I was going to be blogging about trading again in some way with my new blog. But since some of you have continued to email questions on FX trading (you’re all clearly obsessed) I guess I’ll go ahead and start a small segment on trading. Keeping in mind that I’m a pure technical (chartist) trader and that my views on trading will always be relative to how I trade the FX market.

Probably one of the most common questions that I get a lot is, “What indicators do you use?”. Let’s put this one to bed…for the most part I use no indicators. You’re probably in shock and utter disbelief. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve probably used and tinkered with almost all of the mainstream technical indicators and most of the lesser known ones as well in the past 8+ years that I’ve been trading. In the end, I’ve come back to the one indicator to rule them all…price action. Ironically, this also happens to be the least understood aspect of trading by a vast majority of wannabe traders.

Most people I’ve talked to who have been trading unsuccessfully…